It should be no surprise that Democrats' first collective thought after the Sandy Hook shooting was "ban all the guns." I am surprised, however, that it took a whole 5 days to get a hard promise. From Diane Feinstein:
“On the first day of the new Congress, I intend to introduce a bill stopping the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of assault weapons as well as large ammunition magazines, strips and drums that hold more than 10 rounds,” Feinstein said.“I am in the process of gathering support for the bill in the Senate and House.”
“I have been working with my staff for over a year on this legislation,” Feinstein added. “It will be carefully focused on the most dangerous guns that have killed so many people over the years while protecting the rights of gun owners by exempting hundreds of weapons that fall outside the bill’s scope. We must take these dangerous weapons of war off our streets.”
A Justice Department study found the Assault Weapons Ban was responsible for a 6.7 percent decline in total gun murders. However, since the 2004 expiration of the bill, assault weapons have been used in at least 459 incidents, resulting in 385 deaths and 455 injuries.
A summary of key provisions in the updated bill:
- Stops the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of more than 100 specifically-named firearms as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.
- Stops the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices (magazines, strips and drums) capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.
- Protects legitimate hunters and the rights of existing gun owners by:
- grandfathering weapons legally possessed on the date of enactment;
- exempting more than 900 specifically-named weapons used for hunting and sporting purposes; and
- exempting antique, manually-operated, and permanently disabled weapons.
Fortunately not all Democrats are on this path. The generally-right Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke speaks:
Shame on liberals for exploiting tragedy once again in our country and try to use tragedy as a reason to take our rights away. Liberals are shameful.
We have to resist with the ferociousness of a junk yard dog, any, any attempt by liberals to make us less free by chipping away at our constitutional freedoms. The second amendment is as sacred a right as is first amendment or any other amendment. I’ll be willing to have a conversation with liberals about gun control in the same conversation we should have about whether government should restrict our first amendment right or how about whether we should scale back our fourth amendment rights, how about restricting our 14th amendment due process rights? Let’s have a debate about the second amendment in that same conversation. Then let’s see what the left has to say about restricting our freedoms.
Liberals don’t care about curbing violence because if they did they wouldn’t coddle and call for more leniency for criminal perpetrators. When a hold-up man sticks a gun in someone’s face and takes their money, liberals want to offer job training, they want the criminal to serve their sentence walking round in the community with a monitoring device on. How crazy is that.
That's what I'm talking about.
